Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it, follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.

Our rules have been updated and given their own forum. Go and look at them! They are nice, and there may be new ones that you didn't know about! Hooray for rules! Hooray for The System! Hooray for Conforming!

But it is. That was the best part of Gnomish Engineering back in the day; the items that could be relied upon to backfire at the worst possible moment.

Getting shrunk down? cute

Getting a debuff that increases your chance to get crit 100%? not cute.

This right here. The malfunction effects before Cata were silly and good for a laugh. The malfunction effects from Cata engineering items range from deadly to "might wipe group", with no corresponding increase in power to compensate.

GC has been giving warriors a lot of love these past couple weeks. I like the sound of the "new" changes posted recently from a Protection standpoint. Having a lot more rage makes me happy! The charge system on Shield Block will keep it from being up 100% of the time, and with a 15 second cooldown and 2 charges and 6 second duration you can cycle it well with a couple seconds between each shield block I think. Throw in some shield barriers here and there as rage allows, and heroic strike the rest away. Yesss... yesss... Gonna have to get on that beta and run a few dungeons this week.

Why not? Considerably more expensive items will presumably be account wide, like the motorcycle. It probably won't be instant, but both level locked and requiring all previous forms of riding to be purchased.

We recently added account-level changes to achievements in World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, and there’s still a lot of work left before we’re done. The plan here is to illustrate the intent behind our design, which should in turn help you figure out the answers to many of your questions.
Overall, we never want you to play Character A instead of Character B because of achievement concerns. If Character A had the Violet Proto-Drake, then you might not play Character B. If Character A was only one holiday away from the Violet Proto-Drake, then you may not play Character B. If Character A had completed most of the raid achievements from Dragon Soul, you may not want to bring Character B for one fight and miss out on the achievement. Having alts is cool and working on achievements is cool, but we don’t want the two systems to work against each other.
This goal is paramount and drives everything else. If we allowed you to earn extra achievement points from completing an achievement on two different characters, then you might only want to play the character with the most points and you’d feel like you had to grind through all the achievements with every alt, thus defeating the purpose of having account-level achievements.
Most achievements are account-wide
This means you only earn the points once. If you have earned an achievement on one character, you can see it on all your characters. However, and this is important, you will still see the achievement toast (the pop-up notification) if a second or subsequent character completes the achievement. We think it’s still important to recognize milestones like reaching level 80, maxing out a profession, or killing a raid boss for the first time. It's fun to have everyone congratulate you when you get the toast. Nonetheless, this will just be a new character of yours completing the achievement that you’ve already earned on your account. You won’t double up on points.
Most criteria are not account-wide
If you start an achievement on one character, you can't then finish the achievement on another (there are exceptions, so please keep reading). We didn't think it made sense for one character to get level 60 and another to get level 20 and then see the "level 80" achievement toast. If you start to explore Thousand Needles on one character, you’ll probably want to finish that achievement on the same character.
Some achievements are "meta achievements."
These are achievements that require you to get other specific achievements. An infamous example is "What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been." These achievements generally ARE account-wide. If one character earned Noble Gardener and another character earned The Flame Warden, then your account would get Long Strange Trip. (Otherwise it would be weird: it would look as if you had the sub-achievements, but you wouldn't have the meta-achievement). Even though you need Explore Thousand Needles on one character, all of your characters can contribute to Explore Kalimdor.
A very few achievements are account-only.
There are two categories of account-only achievements. One is achievements that are not possible to earn on one character. If we made an achievement to level every class to level 90, it would be account-only. (I'm not sure we will, but it's a good example.) The other category are achievements that are just brutal to complete on one character (and you’d never want to do for multiples), such as 2500 daily quests or 250K honorable kills. In these cases, the cumulative work of all your characters on those criteria will count.
We hope that rewards granted from achievements (pets, mounts, titles, and tabards) will be shared at the account level.
I'm not going to promise this yet, because a lot of magic has to happen for that to work, but it's our intent. We have discussed having a character level requirement for some rewards, so that your level-2 gnome couldn’t walk around with the “Defender of a Shattered World” title just because your level-90 shaman earned it. If the gnome made it to level 80, though, you could proudly show off your title. You also won’t be able to use a faction-specific pet, mount, or title on the wrong faction. The achievement wouldn’t go away -- you just wouldn’t be able to show it off on that character. There are probably additional exceptions and details we’ll find as we dig deeper into the system.
This is the kind of system that will evolve over time, and we don’t think this has to be the way achievements work forever. As beta players start experimenting with it and offering feedback, I am certain that we will end up making even more changes.
Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street is Lead Systems Designer for World of Warcraft. He loves you very, very much. Yes, you.

We recently added account-level changes to achievements in World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, and there’s still a lot of work left before we’re done. The plan here is to illustrate the intent behind our design, which should in turn help you figure out the answers to many of your questions.
Overall, we never want you to play Character A instead of Character B because of achievement concerns. If Character A had the Violet Proto-Drake, then you might not play Character B. If Character A was only one holiday away from the Violet Proto-Drake, then you may not play Character B. If Character A had completed most of the raid achievements from Dragon Soul, you may not want to bring Character B for one fight and miss out on the achievement. Having alts is cool and working on achievements is cool, but we don’t want the two systems to work against each other.
This goal is paramount and drives everything else. If we allowed you to earn extra achievement points from completing an achievement on two different characters, then you might only want to play the character with the most points and you’d feel like you had to grind through all the achievements with every alt, thus defeating the purpose of having account-level achievements.
Most achievements are account-wide
This means you only earn the points once. If you have earned an achievement on one character, you can see it on all your characters. However, and this is important, you will still see the achievement toast (the pop-up notification) if a second or subsequent character completes the achievement. We think it’s still important to recognize milestones like reaching level 80, maxing out a profession, or killing a raid boss for the first time. It's fun to have everyone congratulate you when you get the toast. Nonetheless, this will just be a new character of yours completing the achievement that you’ve already earned on your account. You won’t double up on points.
Most criteria are not account-wide
If you start an achievement on one character, you can't then finish the achievement on another (there are exceptions, so please keep reading). We didn't think it made sense for one character to get level 60 and another to get level 20 and then see the "level 80" achievement toast. If you start to explore Thousand Needles on one character, you’ll probably want to finish that achievement on the same character.
Some achievements are "meta achievements."
These are achievements that require you to get other specific achievements. An infamous example is "What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been." These achievements generally ARE account-wide. If one character earned Noble Gardener and another character earned The Flame Warden, then your account would get Long Strange Trip. (Otherwise it would be weird: it would look as if you had the sub-achievements, but you wouldn't have the meta-achievement). Even though you need Explore Thousand Needles on one character, all of your characters can contribute to Explore Kalimdor.
A very few achievements are account-only.
There are two categories of account-only achievements. One is achievements that are not possible to earn on one character. If we made an achievement to level every class to level 90, it would be account-only. (I'm not sure we will, but it's a good example.) The other category are achievements that are just brutal to complete on one character (and you’d never want to do for multiples), such as 2500 daily quests or 250K honorable kills. In these cases, the cumulative work of all your characters on those criteria will count.
We hope that rewards granted from achievements (pets, mounts, titles, and tabards) will be shared at the account level.
I'm not going to promise this yet, because a lot of magic has to happen for that to work, but it's our intent. We have discussed having a character level requirement for some rewards, so that your level-2 gnome couldn’t walk around with the “Defender of a Shattered World” title just because your level-90 shaman earned it. If the gnome made it to level 80, though, you could proudly show off your title. You also won’t be able to use a faction-specific pet, mount, or title on the wrong faction. The achievement wouldn’t go away -- you just wouldn’t be able to show it off on that character. There are probably additional exceptions and details we’ll find as we dig deeper into the system.
This is the kind of system that will evolve over time, and we don’t think this has to be the way achievements work forever. As beta players start experimenting with it and offering feedback, I am certain that we will end up making even more changes.
Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street is Lead Systems Designer for World of Warcraft. He loves you very, very much. Yes, you.

Sounds pretty good to me. Only thing that questionable for me is having the toasts again on multiple characters. Leveling yet another alt to 10 isn't an achievement everyone in my guild should see, it's alt-itis and it's a serious problem. ;)

There are two categories of account-only achievements. One is achievements that are not possible to earn on one character. If we made an achievement to level every class to level 90, it would be account-only. (I'm not sure we will, but it's a good example.) The other category are achievements that are just brutal to complete on one character (and you’d never want to do for multiples), such as 2500 daily quests or 250K honorable kills. In these cases, the cumulative work of all your characters on those criteria will count.

I'm not really liking that this seems to intentionally avoid clarifying between account and battle.net account, considering how commonly the question comes up. I have one of every class but I'm not ponying up the cash to transfer them all to a single account for meaningless e-points, but FFS I want my meaningless e-points when they all hit 90 and they add this theoretical achievement.

1) meta achievements can draw from multiple characters
2) achievements that require multiple steps (like exploring zones) need to be finished on one character
3) achievements that record a count will be cumulative across all characters (at least for ones that have large numbers)

And while he mentioned that Long Strange Trip would give the Violet Proto to everyone, he didn't say anything about the associated Master Riding skill. Based on everything he said though, I think it'll still be granted to all. Right now, it's coupled to the mount, so that means everyone would get it...if they change it to couple it to the achievement, how is that different than titles (besides the cost)?

1) meta achievements can draw from multiple characters
2) achievements that require multiple steps (like exploring zones) need to be finished on one character
3) achievements that record a count will be cumulative across all characters (at least for ones that have large numbers)

And while he mentioned that Long Strange Trip would give the Violet Proto to everyone, he didn't say anything about the associated Master Riding skill. Based on everything he said though, I think it'll still be granted to all. Right now, it's coupled to the mount, so that means everyone would get it...if they change it to couple it to the achievement, how is that different than titles (besides the cost)?

That would be really nice (no more having to spend the cash on each of my alts). But then I sort of expect they'll just as soon remove that as a reward once it goes account-wide.

Right now the mount speed is hard coded to grant it the first time you use the mount, so unless they actively change that (which I could see due to master riding being a viable gold dump), it'll still reward it. The achievement doesn't reward it technically; the mount does.

Anyway, the post was good. It recapped all the little tidbits they've been saying for the last bunch of months about their intentions with the achievements and consolidated it well.

A bit sad that I will still have to camp Vyragosa on my pally to finish Frostbitten even though my Priest has it. I had really hoped they would complete each other.

Oh well, as long as all the "gain x pvp kills" or "loot y gold" will be granted from everyone, that's fine.

They need to change up how physical achievement rewards are handed out with everything going account wide. Make an achievement reward vendor that locks out purchasing the items based on if you have the achievement or not so then new characters' mailboxes aren't flooded with useless mount and pet learning items they already "know" since they're account wide now. Having a central vendor means you just need to pop by on any character and learn it once and you're done. They may need to make some Feats of Strength/Achievements to attach certain reward items to (such as the Mountain Dew warbot) to make such a system work, but I think it'd be way better than all of your new characters getting 20+ mails as soon as they're created.

They need to change up how physical achievement rewards are handed out with everything going account wide. Make an achievement reward vendor that locks out purchasing the items based on if you have the achievement or not so then new characters' mailboxes aren't flooded with useless mount and pet learning items they already "know" since they're account wide now. Having a central vendor means you just need to pop by on any character and learn it once and you're done. They may need to make some Feats of Strength/Achievements to attach certain reward items to (such as the Mountain Dew warbot) to make such a system work, but I think it'd be way better than all of your new characters getting 20+ mails as soon as they're created.

Well, with the new system they have set up for mounts/pets, at least, they could feasably not bother with the item rewards at all and just place them directly into your mount/pet roster. Assuming titles are going account wide too (which was implied in the post, dunno if it'll be in for launch), those already aren't awarded via an item.

So yeah, they shouldn't have to bother with mailing you a reward at all. If they must do it, simply mail it to the single character who earned the achievement.

I mean, it would be pointless to mail your account violet proto drakes since if you "learn" it on one character it's already learned on another (in MoP, not on live, obviously); so all of those others sent to your alts would be completely unusable.

I'm sure they'll change the way they are rewarded so they're not doing that.

Right now, it's coupled to the mount, so that means everyone would get it...if they change it to couple it to the achievement, how is that different than titles (besides the cost)?

Why do you say, "besides the cost"? The cost is the matter at hand, here. Master riding is a nice, chunky gold sink for potentially each character someone levels up. I don't think Blizzard is going to want people to be able to permanently graduate from "having to" pay that gold sink on all characters they will ever make in the future because they did Long Strange Trip once.

Unless they decide they don't care about master riding being a gold sink anymore and gut the cost on it like they did with artisan. I don't really imagine them doing that either, though.

Right now, it's coupled to the mount, so that means everyone would get it...if they change it to couple it to the achievement, how is that different than titles (besides the cost)?

Why do you say, "besides the cost"? The cost is the matter at hand, here. Master riding is a nice, chunky gold sink for potentially each character someone levels up. I don't think Blizzard is going to want people to be able to permanently graduate from "having to" pay that gold sink on all characters they will ever make in the future because they did Long Strange Trip once.

Unless they decide they don't care about master riding being a gold sink anymore and gut the cost on it like they did with artisan. I don't really imagine them doing that either, though.

I just mean, based on what that post says, they aren't going to make you earn an achievement more than once to get a reward from it. So, if the Violet Proto and Master Riding are going to still be tied together somehow, it doesn't matter if the skill comes from the mount or the achievement, either way it should go to everyone on the account.

The only other option is to totally remove Master Riding from any mounts and make it a purchasable skill. Remember what happened last time they tried that?

Master riding was removed from mounts and made purchasable. Violet Proto is (I believe) the only exception, and that was because they didn't want to cut people off who had been working on it for a long time.

There's this guy on MG Alliance side named Socks, always refers to himself in third person. Definitely a comedy relief character but he's so goddamn good at it. I was observing him talking to a friend (about how he got shot protecting another friend; she compliments that he's just that way, and he goes, "Which way?" and starts spinning around - it made me laugh, anyway), and he suddenly does something (combat log isn't revealing any info) to someone else nearby, making them transform to look like him. Then he starts ranting in OOC text about the glitch working and starts chasing the guy about being monsters together and... BAH. None of this makes any sense to you but I like Moon Guard, fucking haters.

Considering how piss easy it is to level in WoW, the levels shouldn't grant "achievements", but that's more pedantry than anything else.

Achievements are less "incredible feats" and more "milestones." I mean, there's going to be variance in the difficulty to keep it the appeal broad. There's a reason why clearing raid achievements gets you a kickass mount and hitting level cap means another 10 points.